News

Can't I Play Squash Outdoors?

Every summer, on a clear, sunny, temperate day, the same idea hits me: Can't I play squash outdoors?

In a word, no.

But it baffles the senses, because squash is a fun, active game with lots of running, and no one wants to be cooped up in some plaster-and-concrete hellhole on a gorgeous summer day. The racket types say, “Go play tennis.” But I don't want to play tennis. I want to play outdoor squash.

So did Scotland-born squash pro turned general contractor Steve Polli. And he did something about it.About 10 years ago, Polli was bicycling through Leddy Park in Burlington, Vermont. He saw a concrete tennis backboard and thought to himself, With a little bit of construction, this could be an outdoor squash court.

That "little bit of construction" turned out to be $60,000, and the rest is history. But just because it's history, doesn't mean it has a happy ending. With some friends, some donated money, and his own cash, Polli built the court, which now stands smack in the heart of Ben and Jerry's country, near the shores of Lake Champlain.

Here's a picture of the court under construction:

And here are some technical details from squash enthusiast Faraz Hussain:

"The excavator had to dig 4.5 feet below the ground due to Vermont's deep permafrost layer. The front wall in squash is 15 feet high, but Steven's went to 16 feet. This makes the total height of the concrete wall 20.5 feet if you include the 4.5 feet below the ground. The concrete was poured in two stages. First an 8-foot pour, and then a 12-foot pour.

The walls are 10 inches thick. The side wall slopes down to seven feet, and the back wall is four feet high. Steven wanted people to be able to watch the game from the outside, which is why he kept the back wall only four feet high.... There is also four-foot high netting around the court to catch loose balls. Without the netting, you would have to walk a few hundred feet to go and find your ball!

The front wall faces north to avoid playing into the sun. The court is vandal-proof. The walls are painted with a special polyurethane paint that is graffiti-proof. If graffiti is sprayed on it, then there is a lacquer solvent you can use to erase the graffiti."

Alas, the whole project has proved to be something of a bust. Polli guesses that maybe a hundred matches will be played there this summer, but sadly, outdoor squash has not caught on. "The regular squash players don't want to play outside in the scorching sun, there are no changing rooms there, and you can't sit down and have a nice drink after a game," Polli said. "I thought it was a great idea, and that kids would get involved. If I built it, they would come. But they didn't."

"The rich people who play squash live in the south end of Burlington, and this is the north end," Polli adds. "Since I built it, I've moved to the south end, so it's not ideally located for me, either."

On information and belief, as lawyers like to say, there is one other outdoor squash court in the U.S., just outside the Twin Cities. In 1992, A-level squash player and businessman Gregg Brooksbank had moved away from the center of town and was worried that he couldn't find a game. So he built an outdoor court behind his driveway. His father was a rackets enthusiast who had built an outdoor racquetball court at his home in Stillwater, Minnesota. Outdoors seemed like the way to go. "I had the impression that's where all the old Pakistani pros learned their game," Brooksbank says.

Brooksbank was 34 then. He's now 53 and admits that the court, while in great shape, "Is very seldom used. The concrete floor is really hard on the knees." (And on the ankles, apparently—Brooksbank has had several operations.) Even with a court on the premises, squash is not the preferred family activity. "I envisioned my kids would grow up being squash whizzes," he says, "but instead they're Nordic ski racers and soccer players, which is the normal stuff for around here. Just the other day, one suggested we turn the squash court into a climbing wall."